By Elizabeth Weise, @eweise, USA TODAY

That's what 18,000-plus buyers found this week at the Winter Fancy Food Show in San Francisco. Each year, buyers for upscale delicatessens, groceries and shops scope out the newest thing in the cavernous Moscone Center, which for three days turns into the biggest, most over-the-top snack party imaginable.

More than 1,300 companies offer tastings, vying to entice buyers with California jelly beans, Korean seaweed snacks and artisanal pickles from New Jersey.

Buyers come from around the country, and farther, to see what's hot. Rajeev Lee and Allen Smith were scouting new products for Maybury deli-supermarket in Dubai.

"We cater to a lot of ex-pats, and these are the foods they want," Lee said. This year's big trends:

•Coconut. In canned juice or as an ingredient or simply a dried, unsweetened snack, coconut was legion. Benny San Andres of Sun Tropics of San Ramon, Calif., talked up the clear juice's healthful properties. "One can has the potassium of five-and-a-half bananas," he said.

•Vegetable and fruit oils. You use olive oil, once bought walnut oil and tasted truffle oil. But how about pumpkin seed oil? Or tomato seed oil? Or cherry pit oil or chili seed oil? Marietta De Angelo spent a year as an exchange student on a farm in Neuruppersdorf, Austria. She learned to love pumpkin seed oil, which is drizzled on anything from salad to vanilla ice cream (really). She and her husband now run Culinary Imports in Rowley, Mass., and import the oil. They also sell cherry seed oil -- "good on fish and ham" -- and tomato oil -- "great in salad dressing," she says.

•Beer as an ingredient. The past several decades have seen a resurgence in the art of brewing. Now beer is making its way into foods, such as the Beer Flats crackers from Daelia's Food in Cincinnati. The crackers come in porter and pilsner flavors. For serious beer lovers, there's Beer Candy from Santa Clara, Calif. Computer programmer and longtime brewer Steve Casselman started making beer candy a few years ago and has branched out into beer jelly.

It is strong stuff. A spoonful of jelly tastes like a swig of stout. "It's really good on pancakes," Casselman said. "You take the first bite and you think, 'This isn't right.' Then with the second bite, 'That's OK.' And by the third bite you're thinking, 'That's pretty good!'"

•Heritage foods. America's growing love affair with its sometimes forgotten foods and animal breeds was on full view at the show. One such food was black walnuts, the robust-tasting American walnut species that grows mostly in the Southeast. Well-known to bakers in that region, the nut is making inroads elsewhere.

David Hammons is the fourth generation of his family to run Hammons Black Walnuts in Stockton, Mo. Each year, his company sells 2 million to 3 million pounds. They aren't grown commercially. They're wild and hand-picked. Sixty-five percent come from Missouri, where harvesting black walnuts is a nice income addition for locals, Hammons said. "We buy a lot of people's Christmas when we buy walnuts from them."

•Herbs in drinks. Herbal drinks are big this year, but far from the usual mint and chamomile tea. New taste combos came from Numi Organics of Oakland, which had Broccoli Cilantro Tea; Wild Poppy Juice in Los Angeles, whose booth featured Blood Orange Chili Juice; and Victoria's Kitchen, which had Licorice Mint Almond Water.

•Spicy sweet. Salt has been showing up in sweets for several years; sea salt caramels and chocolates are widely available. Now heat is migrating into the candy world. Gourmet Thyme in St. Paul featured cayenne shortbread. Nuttyness in Oakland had orange cayenne marzipan. Poco Dolce Confections in San Francisco had peanut brittle infused with chilies. And from Burlington, Vt., came Lake Champlain Chocolates' Spicy Aztec with cayenne, pumpkin seeds and cinnamon.

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